Paul Berman Should Not Fear Tariq Ramadan.

Paul Berman's enormous 28,000-word essay about Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan is a must-read. Berman's intellectual goals are most laudable - against terrorism and for universal human rights. Unfortunately, I fear his essay is incomplete where it is not unfair, unfair where it is not dishonest, dishonest where it is not incomplete.

Ostensibly a book review of all of Ramadan's works, it is also an intellectual history, a rebuke of this NY Times Magazine Profile of Ramadan written by Ian Buruma, and a criticism of what Berman sees as a scholarly and journalistic elite who are complacent with terrorism and human rights abuses in Muslim communities. To summarize the argument of Berman's essay: Ramadan is not the modern Muslim who is attempting to reconcile Islam with modernity, the Enlightenment, and pluralism we read about in the NY Times profile. By looking at how his scholarship is rooted in his long family history, and by truly understanding his arguments, you will find that Ramadan is more in league intellectually with terrorists than with modern liberals. Finally, Berman argues that the main reason we don't know this already is because there is an "intellectual establishment," represented by Buruma, whose Third World sentiments encourage them to explain away beliefs that oppress women and celebrate suicide terrorism.

In short, that's crap. Somebody has to say it.

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Berman employs his own interpretation of Ramadan's family history as a way of clouding Ramadan's explicit commitments against anti-Semitism and against terrorism. Berman often acknowledges as much. Ramadan interprets the Koran as clearly teaching Muslims to treat Jews with respect and dignity - in short, that the Koran is not anti-Semitic, and neither should Muslims be. Ramadan also interprets the Koran as rejecting terrorism. Berman wants to undermine Ramadan here. He does this by tracing Ramadan's ancestry to his grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, who was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, to his father, Said Ramadan, who was a lieutenant of the Muslim Brotherhood, and his brother, Hani Ramadan, who is a leader at the Islamic Center of Geneva. Berman then links these thinkers to Sayyid Qutb, the radical Islamic intellectual whose work is often cited as the intellectual backbone to Al-Qaeda. No matter that Al-Banna explicitly disagreed with thinkers like Qutb, wanted to reconcile Islam with parliamentary democracy, and never even met Qutb. No matter that Said Ramadan made efforts to distinguish himself from Qutb's radicalism. No matter that Tariq is not his brother. Berman uses the fact that Tariq Ramadan's family history is one of Muslim Third World political and intellectual elites to argue that Despite Ramadan's explicit rejection of anti-Semitism and terrorism, despite his explicit interpretation of the Koran as rejecting anti-Semitism and terrorism, Ramadan is suspect.

The part of the essay that comes closest to being a book review is Berman's discussion about the place of doubt in Ramadan's Islam, the West, and the Challenges of Modernity. In that book, Berman points out that Ramadan's interpretation of Islam leaves no room for doubt about God and Islam. Berman uses this point to suggest that Ramadan is thus - again - more in league with proto-fascists and radicals like Qutb. But this is a dangerously incomplete understanding of Ramadan's arguments. In Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Tariq Ramadan argues that the true interpretation of the Koran, while it may leave no room for the Western, Cartesian concept of doubt, includes instead the Islamic tradition of submission. This concept, writes Ramadan, means that the practice of being a Muslim means submission to an Almighty God and the weakness of human beings. This serves, for Ramadan, as the Muslim analogue to Cartesian doubt. He writes on page 81, "The third pivot of Muslim identity is an open and constantly active expression of this last element because it is based on "being Muslim," defined by the action of educating and transmitting." (His italics.) He goes on to write that submission to God through active learning is a practice of "Texts and the context," meaning Muslims must engage the Society in which they live. This, plus the Muslim concept of al-tahsiniyyat (enhancing, perfecting), Ramadan writes, are ways in which Muslims might root themselves in their own modern virtues of liberalism, pluralism, and rational inquiry. As Ramadan writes on pages 32-33 of Western Muslims and the Future of Islam:

Related posts from similar topics:

Tariq Ramadan: 'I am totally innocent of all these crimes'

Tariq Ramadan Case: Prison is Better for Me

An Open Letter to President of the French Republic

Tariq Ramadan: Facing Prosecution or Persecution?

Tariq Ramadan: Zero Access to Family, Prison Mail

France: Tariq Ramadan and False Promise of Secularism

Tariq Ramadan: Judge Orders Indefinite Imprisonment

Tariq Ramadan Case: Calling on Impartial and Equal Justice

Unjust Detention of Professor Tariq Ramadan

Travesty of Justice: Incarceration of Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan's wife talks about her husband's case

Another step towards an Iron Curtain

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It's true that Tariq Ramadhan is a great person, and his grandfather was a great person. Being somewhat 'moderate'/'modern' or 'radical' Muslim nowadays is more on the manufacture of consent. There's nothing to associate superficially between Tariq and his root with terrorism. The real terrorists are Bush and his counterparts in Israel. Tariq and his Muslim Brotherhood root are great figures of contemporary Islamic thoughts.

what kind of reformation people are talking about in islam? Like christianity? Do whatever u like and then attribute that to God? May Allah save us from such thoughts. These so-called intellectual are always trying to please westerner, not Allah. However much one try he/she will never be able to please any of the unbelievers unless he (Rusdi)/she (ayan hirsi ali) becomes one of the enemy of islam. so if tariq ramadan or anyone so-called intellectual are thinking that theyll be able to please their western friends then he is simply fooling himself. Muslim intellectuals are those who are always trying to implement the laws of Allah and His messenger. Rest are just trying to achieve some fame and happy and long life of this world and in the way putting common muslims more in trouble. So stop trying to appease ur non-muslim friends, instead try to please Allah, that is better for all the muslims. Ur own ideas and logic and reasoning has got nothing to do when Allah already gave all that is required for our daily life. If anyone even think that Allah did not complete this deen and it requires any addition or extrapolation then they are none but fuel for hell and unbelievers in Allah. May Allah guide us all so that we try to achieve the goal He wants us to achieve.

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